30 Year motorcycle and travel industry veteran Cat MacLeod of Leod Escapes offers up some insights on the moto tourism world and why a new kind of moto travel needed to be created

The “Good” about Standard Motorcycle Tours

The best part is Motorcycles! If you don’t understand this head to golf.com and leave the real fun to us weirdos. Motorcycles are the best way to experience the world. You enjoy unobstructed views. You feel the curvy road. You experience the smells, the sounds and the fun of waving at passers by. While there is a lot to be said for the solo experience, there is nothing better than riding with friends. Even on a tour with strangers you quickly make friends. Sharing adventures with kindred spirits can draw people into lifelong friendships. Getting people out of the country is a good thing. Pulling you out of your culture expands your perceptions. You unplug from your home identity. You interact with the real world rather than staring at your phone. If you sense a vile diatribe about mass tourism coming, let’s be clear, there are touristy things that should be experienced. Locals and tourists love a walk in an ancient redwood forest. Despite the crowds, I never miss a chance to see the Pantheon when I’m in Rome. There are lots of motorcycle tour companies and many are good. The big ones run pleasant, if somewhat bland tours for the mass market and they can be fun. These standard tours satisfy what many people think they should get out of a trip abroad on two wheels. A relaxing motorcycle vacation where riders don’t have to think, worry or mentally engage with anything…just ride to the next stop. Let’s take a little look backstage and examine the root causes of why many people will not take them.

The Bad – What Sells Versus What’s Great

Good tour operators are frustrated by this paradox. What sells often isn’t what is great. For example: A ride across the Czech countryside of Bohemia with plaza lunch in Jindrichuv Hradec is far better than an autostrada ride across Tuscany with lunch in the lovely hilltown of Volterra. The Czech ride is more fun, more authentic, isn’t clogged with tour busses, the lunch will be better and cheaper….but Czech doesn’t sell. The Tuscany/Volterra day sells because it’s a destination people have heard of.

The Bad – Exit Through the Gift Shop

Tourist attractions are easy for a tour operator. Alluring photographs and familiar names sell tours. Attractions give guides a break from 24/7 babysitting. The castle walk, folk dancing show or stale tapas tasting keeps clients entertained. Guides get a respite from painfully obvious questions or over sharing that would make a therapist cringe. At its best, an attraction offers visitors a wondrous experience. They deliver insight into the culture of the host country. At worst, it’s an overpriced, fake experience. It’s a local embarrassment that ends with a tacky gift shop. So how do these places continue to exist? It’s not the tour operators that keep them churning. It’s the tourist mindset.

Be a Traveler NOT a Tourist

Tourists are seen by locals as anything from a favorable annoyance to a vile infestation. Most of what makes tourists annoying is willful ignorance combined with a need to impress people back home. Tagging Internet approved attractions with selfies on their phone, in a frantic race to “see” as many sites as possible. This mindset perpetuates embarrassments like, the mess of “Checkpoint Charlie”, the underwhelming “Little Mermaid Statue”, the pickpocket paradise of “Khoasan Road” and the absurd “Romeo & Juliet Balcony.” Tourists return home with empty heads, empty wallets, and a suitcase full of “trophies” destined to gather dust or stuff Christmas stockings. A tourist goes to SEE, a traveler goes to UNDERSTAND. An engaged traveler is welcome just about anywhere. Travelers are genuinely curious. Not just listening to what’s on the museum audio guide but paying attention to local life happening in front of them. Why are people buying that? What are those political posters about? What’s the top trending food here? Exploring cultural differences is fun. Visit a foreign grocery store, it’s fascinating. A traveler offers a mirror for locals to see themselves in a different way. Meeting you could be the most interesting part of their day. Travel mirrors your own culture back at you. You don’t know your country until you leave it.

The first reason most riders won’t take a tour – Boring Pace

Most moto tour operators have a BIG problem. Many of their clients lack riding skills. A danger to themselves and others, you won’t know which ones until you get on the road. Claims of expertise, training courses, and the famous line of, “Oh I’m just gonna take it easy” mean nothing. It’s the worst part of our jobs that we are hesitant to talk about. Moto tour operators are often forced to take riders from one tourist attraction to another on routes designed for the least skilled rider of the group. This isn’t the best route. It’s the one that sells tours and won’t kill you if you’re riding skills are low. Good tour guides moderate the pace to accommodate everyone but ultimately if you’re all in one group, you’re tied to the least skilled rider. So the first reason most people won’t take a tour. They think it’s gonna be too slow.

The second reason, most riders won’t take a tour – The Idiot Gear

We riders have a dirty secret and we all know it. In groups, some of us ride like idiots. So what’s really happening? Often times there is one or two riders, riding well within their limits and enjoying the road. These riders are relaxed, smooth, they are breaking early and into the turn, using a little body position to put more rubber on the road and not too much lean angle. These riders are using skills to enjoy the road at a spirited pace. Then for reasons of ego, status, showing off, call at what you want, the idiot gear kicks in. Some of us start riding faster than we should. We ride beyond our abilities. Tense, twitchy, running wide, not looking far enough ahead, using too much lean angle, these riders are using RISK not skill to go fast. Luck runs out. As a tour guide, I’ve got plenty of video clips of riders blowing turns, almost dumping it as they scrape pegs, breaking too late, making passes they shouldn’t and other obvious signs they’re pushing it. The worst are “destination roads”. Roads that are famous and promoted in the tour brochure. Passo Stelvio is littered with broken mirrors and front brake levers. Riders who don’t have the skills insist on riding it and since it’s such a famous road they feel this is the time to push it. The tow trucks and local hospitals are very familiar with this problem. Hopefully riders just end up having a close escape and perhaps admitting a “pucker moment” at lunch. When luck runs out, we are cleaning up a mess that holds up the whole tour. So this is reason number two most people won’t take a tour. They are worried they will feel pressured to ride beyond their ability.

The “Ugly American” rider and the curse of geography

So if routes have to be made for the least skilled rider, are American riders a problem? Unfortunately, yes they are but it’s not entirely our fault personally. We are simply products of our environment. Yes the USA is a vast nation isolated from the rest of the world but for such a large nation, we are short on curvy paved roads. We have some fabulous riding areas from the Blue Ridge Mountains of the east to the Rockies and Sierra ranges in the west. There’s hundreds of little spots but far too often, it’s surrounded by vast swaths of straight or clogged mazes of sprawl. American riders had to get their thrills another way. We are famous for big beautiful heavy machines with lusty exhaust notes and no real need for handling. We have certainly indulged in an array of off-road bikes to dice through the woods or race across the desert. It’s been fun but as products of our environment American riders sadly are famed for having low riding skills compare it to the rest of the world when it comes to twisty tarmac (pavement). Americans have been buying more performance oriented machines but our riding skills are still behind the curve. There is a decent percentage that is an exceptions to this and we have to give credit here to the many training programs that are increasing in popularity. According to foreign guides, we’ve still got some catching up to do. That’s okay, changing and catching up is something Americans are good at. So train up before going abroad.

It’s time for something new – It all began with a bunch of misfits

At Leod Escapes we are known for the “Track & Tour” vacation made for track riders to do some sport touring in a foreign country and then do track time on a famous MotoGP Circuit. Since our clients are intermediate track riders or better we can design our routes like locals. Our clients are coming to ride a MotoGP Circuit and enjoy some thrilling twisties off the beaten path. We don’t have to include tourism attractions. No flamenco shows on our tours. As a frequent guest on the “Motorcycles & Misfits” podcast, we were presented with a challenge. Make a tour for the rest of us riders. First most motorcycle riders in the USA are not track riders. Second, although our tours are magnificent they are also very expensive. How do we lower the cost significantly? Third how do you accommodate riders of varying skill levels so that everyone has fun? After two years of thoroughly testing our solution, we are ready to present the Trippinar.

The Trippinar

It’s not a tour. Think of it as a weeklong motorcycle training seminar to show you how to ride like a local, eat like a local and stay where local vacationing riders would stay. You get some homework on routing from Leod Escapes and an online rider training course from Yamaha Champions Riding School. You get prepared and train before you arrive. Locals don’t need a luggage truck neither do you, so don’t pay for one. Use our tips on how to pack light and right. Then enjoy a fun week in a great riding destination like the Julian Alps, the Dolomites, the Pyrenees or Tuscany. These are the places local riders go to enjoy great roads, great views and of course great food. Yamaha Champions Riding School coaches join us to help refine your skills but only if you want. The better you get at something the more fun it is and primary goal here is fun. Stay in touch with fellow riders and get real time feedback from the instructors on an included Chatterbox X2 Slim radio.

Freedom of Pace

Join a squadron of 3 to 4 riders based on your desired pace. Practice your skills and improve without the pressure of trying to keep up or the frustration of being stuck behind someone too slow. Everyone has taken the YCRS ChampU course and practiced at home. So you are all speaking the same riding language. Now you practice your skills on real challenging roads not some parking lot. This is epic good fun. No following the guide. You practice roles of being leader, navigator, or sweep in your squadron. This means everyone can ride within their abilities and improve their skills.

Ride the dream for less

So we’ve tested it for two years in several destinations and it works. People have a blast and their riding improves. We get a lot of people traveling outside the USA for the first time. After a few days peoples fears vanish. It’s not that hard. People engage with the locals like travelers. Clients are returning and in some cases to do the same Trippinar again with friends. The price includes the hotels, rental bikes, instructors, preloaded GPSs, a roadbook and use of radio units. It’s everything you need but more importantly, you’re not paying for stuff you don’t need. Our instructors love it to. There’s less pressure on us to manage a client every waking minute and instead give them the freedom to explore. They return home better riders and more confident global travelers. Wanna go for a ride?

2025 Trippinar schedule

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